Don't ask me why I picked these incidents to write about today; it's just another mystery of the Universe. They all involve light behaving strangely, but that's about all that I can say about them--I certainly can't explain them. The only thing that I am even the slightest bit confident in saying is that they probably don't all come from the same source. Still..... Let's begin with the most well-attested-to weird light experience that I have in my files: the Toledo Donuts.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Toledo Donuts occurred outside of the Oregon town of Toledo in a rural setting near Pioneer Mountain. The dates were the month of March 1966. There had been several UFO sightings in the area. Before the flap was over, at least 25 people had seen some aerial oddity or they had seen "The Lights". Exactly when the events began at the Reeves home is a bit unclear [at least to me] but my little stack of resources seem to say this: the daughter of the house was walking home with friends when they saw a reddish glow in the field. On closer approach, it seemed to be a domed shaped something with boiling smoke around it. Going on further, they saw another object shaped like a flashlight. The daughter threw a rock at it. A bunch of big lights suddenly turned on in the air and scared the girls home. Some morning later, Mrs. Reeves was awakened by a rosy glow in the bedroom and a high-pitched hum. She turned to look out the bedroom door and saw a watermelon-sized red "cloud" hanging in the air. It then just disappeared. Following that, the family was treated, on several nights over the next few weeks, to pulsing donut-shaped lights which crawled all over the interior walls of the house. Despite the family trying to end this "invasion" of uncanny visitors by blocking out all the windows, they still manifested on the walls. The light-spots were from 1 to 30 inches in diameter and would just manifest and suddenly go out. Others saw the lights. One neighbor saw small, round disk-shaped lights flying outside in the apple orchard. Another, deliberately camping out on the family's request, saw a blue spot manifest on one end wall, and another similar spot on the other end of the house, as if some beam had penetrated clear through. No source could be located for the beam [if it was one] and no evidence could be seen inside the house that a beam was passing through. The deputy sheriff was one of seven witnesses to this oddity, and it was he who ultimately looked up and spotted an orange object maneuvering high above. With a high-pitched whine, the object disappeared. The details of the case were sent to Dr. J.B.Rhine, the world-famous parapsychologist at Duke, but he was as perplexed as anyone. He remarked that there are often light manifestations in poltergeist cases, but those are described from European cases and not American ones. [We also know from previous posts that the European light phenomena do not manifest in this exact way anyway]. The Toledo case remains a wild and wooly mystery. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But it's not completely alone. John Timmerman interviewed a husband and wife living on a farm near Heath, Ohio. In 1981, they had a close encounter with something very strange. Something had awakened all the dogs and they could hear, just outside, people talking in what seemed to be a foreign language. They were afraid to look outside and the sounds ultimately subsided. In the morning, they found long twelve-inch "scratches" on the ground as if someone had made them walking. The trail led all the way to the fence line and then seemed to pass through the fence rather than showing signs of climbing over it. Then, sometime later, but connected [rightly or wrongly] in their minds, came the lights. These were perfectly white, round spots on the bedroom walls at night. "At night when the lights was out, you could see it. It would come in and go clear around this room and sometimes stay there....and it was perfectly round and it would start here and go clear around that wall. And it bugged me so much, it about drove me crazy. I put the blinds, the curtains, so that this light could not come in. But it did anyway, believe it....This happened probably about a month straight, I suppose this happened...no matter where I put them curtains and how I pulled them, we still had that light going around that room....Well, it stayed there maybe until morning, or if the light came in the room you couldn't see it....It moved around as though someone was looking the whole room over." John asked them how they slept. "Not too well, believe it".-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There are two more cases of lightspots on the walls in my files, both from 1962 and both from California [Anaheim and Azusa]. In both cases the lights were about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The light phenomenon which is pictured [poorly by me] in the illustration accompanying this section, refers to a 1997 case from Bloomington, Illinois wherein the couple saw a multicolored "orb" appear on their kitchen wall. The thing was about 2 to 3 inches in diameter and seemed to bob as it cruised 3 feet high across the floor. as it came near them, it suddenly expanded to about five inches in diameter. All the time it oscillated in colors throughout the spectrum. When it reached the oven, it merely disappeared without a noise. I include this experience here because it seems to have some small similarity to the wallspots and seemed flat to the wall to begin with. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another marginally similar event occurred in Brussels, Belgium in 1970. Here a man was walking in the evening when he saw a patch of light on the ground ahead of him. This was big, about 7 to 8 meters in diameter. As he approached it began to vibrate and became phosphorescent green. It then assumed a shape like a bell, 5 meters high. "the inside seemed formed of thousands of tiny luminous particles which moved agitatedly in all directions, giving the impression of great nervousness." The thing, without noise, odor or heat, moved away across the ground and disappeared behind a mound. Can patches of light sense the presence of humans? We're Out Proctor now.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are cases where beams mysteriously enter bedrooms for no apparent reason. The drawing on the lower left represents a case from Traunstein, Austria in 1975. Here a beam seemed to pass through the window of a 75 year-old lady who was trying to get to sleep [the beam didn't help]. "It was a ray; bright as burning magnesium, crossing my room like a line....it was eerie--a sharp outlined stripe, flat....There was no sound, not even a crackle...it shot in and went as far as the kitchen, perhaps to the door of our flat--and back out".
It did not illuminate the room. It seemed to come in, fast but gradually, and be pulled back out. It seemed to be "flat", a la two dimensional or at least extremely thin. The path seemed to curve downwards slightly as it crossed the room. Yep, an everyday event in Austria.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1956, in Waipukurau, New Zealand a 58 year-old farmer was up at 2am due to some cramping muscles. He got to walking in hopes of working them out. Over his shoulder came a beam of light, hitting his mirror. Turning, he saw a beam of bluish-silver colored light coming down at an angle into his room. It was a round "pipe" in cross-section, and was composed of light so dense that he could see nothing through it.
But it did not illuminate the room. The farmer stared directly into the light which seemed so intense,
but it did not negatively affect his eyes at all. [reminds me of the people who see the "spinning Suns"]. He stepped towards his window, and the beam switched right off. In its place was a distant object of the same distinctive blue color. One more step and it too went off.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The other illustration above is for the 1972 Logrono, Spain case. Here a BOL entered the bedroom of a student of theology at a college in NE Spain. His tape recorder had been playing music but the station had gone off the air. This didn't deter a Ball-of-Light from entering his room and heading for the recorder. This thing was very bright and football-shaped; a smoothly luminous form. Once opposite the recorder's night table, it extended a "solid" beam of light into the cassette slot of the machine [or at least thereabouts---our theology student was trying to creep as deeply under the covers as he could]. The BOL then ascended and went directly out of the window. It is not stated how the student worked this phenomenon into his theology.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are, of course, a nearly unlimited number of cases of BOLs. I've picked out a few which seemed to "materialize" inside the structure of a building,[or some aspect of their "act" did] rather than to "fly in". In the late 19th century, apparently in a small town in New Hampshire [the correspondent to the
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research wasn't very specific on this] two members of a farm family were going to bed when they noticed a light in the kitchen which they thought was a fire on the stove. The child went to bed while the mother investigated. She found a patch of light moving on the wall, gradually growing from a nail's-head size to the diameter of a dinnerplate. It then "flashed" all over the room. [apparently then just simply disappearing]. The next night, despite taking precautions of blocking up the windows with the curtains, the light materialized again in three different appearances, racing about the walls. The family members interpreted this as a warning of an impending death in the family, which subsequently occurred. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The illustration with this section [again, caveat emptor, this was done by me, and so is not to be taken overly seriously] refers to an incident in Gloggnitz, Austria in 1977. Here a 19 year-old radio mechanic was lying in bed when the room was "invaded" by a 50cm hollow ball composed of "electric red" bars. This thing hovered and slowly moved towards his door. Jumping up, he accidentally bumped the thing with his leg. It then dimmed and the bars shrank in diameter. They gradually went to nothing and the thing was gone. There was no noise, no heat, no physiological sensation at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1968, in Miami, Florida, two people were going to bed when something came right through the solid [and closed] front door to settled in the air at their feet. It was a soccerball-sized ball of light. It then went up to the ceiling and over their heads. Staying tight to the ceiling, the thing broke into five equal pieces, which danced and cavorted about. [one wonders if I should say "Pixies" instead of "Pieces"?]
"They were bright white and emitted no light." One object moved away from the others as if on an exploration of the room.
"It cast no shadow on anything or lit anything..." The male got up and approached the light which was dancing on the wall. He tried unsuccessfully to see into it. Then he tried to touch it. At this point the "explorer light" shot up to the ceiling and proceeded to lead the other four in a line back out the door. Going outside, the couple saw their visitors dancing above their rooftop, finally coalescing into one, and zig-zagging away at great speed. Although the guy kept this event in memory, the girl did not. She only recalled it years later when they were outside watching meteors and re-told the encounter.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 2003, the distressingly-named Booger Bottom, Georgia was witness to another "light mystery". Here three adults were driving in an SUV when a "red swirling object" appeared outside. Suddenly "50" red silver-dollar-sized globes manifested inside the vehicle. The lights seemed "curious" to them, as if "scanning" them. Then they just left, leaving the witnesses with the impression that they had an encounter with intelligences of some kind. The woman was quite concerned that, whatever they were, they might come back and "cart us off". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only thing that correlates all this stuff to me is "Light Behaving Badly". What that leads to, I can't say [though it's fun to guess]. There seems to be some playing about with "dimensionality" [i.e. how many dimensions are these things going to bother to use in their manifestations?] And/or there is playing around with space, as in winking out of it or passing right through other things in it. Whether the lights have a relationship to any actual "substance" at all is not obvious in any of these cases. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A possibly germane thing occurred in 1975 in Annadale, New York. Here two [unfortunately for credibility] 15 year-old boys saw an orange football-shaped object some distance away. They watched for ten minutes. The light began to collapse, very slowly, in upon itself. Without any noise or notable sensation, the "big football" became a "basketball" and kept folding in, getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared. NICAP investigation felt that the boys were trustworthy and somewhat shook up by their experience, and some charred vegetation and sheared tree limbs were found at the scene---the boys had mentioned, and knew of, none of that. Was this a light form removing itself from our space? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And, probably not germane, but reminiscent [somewhat] of our Midnight in Finland incident, there was a 1962 encounter in Campbell, Ohio. Here two adults were in the lady's driveway getting ready for a trip at night, when they saw two glowing balls of light directly ahead of them. {just over the house in line of sight}. The things cleared the tree-line with a zig-zag motion and a pulsing orange glow. They seemed to be connected to one another by a deep-red bar. The son and his mother got out of their car to watch. The things flew directly over their heads. While overhead, the middle bar seemed to disappear and the sphere on the left changed from orange to bright silver. [like a mirror]. It radiated light like "falling glowing snowflakes". This glowing lasted from 3 to 5 seconds, whereupon the silver mirror turned back into orange and the "snowflakes" seemed to flow back into the sphere. [this flake like falling is what reminded me a bit of the Finland incident]. there was no sound nor heat throughout the experience. This experience was sent in a letter to Jim McDonald, but I don't know if he followed it up.
So there we are: misbehaving lights. Your guess as to what was behind them is as good as anyone's. Still, they as a group have a vague intuition of trying to form some kind of pattern to me. This post's been a long one, and if too long I apologize--but you see what happens when I have my files around. Now it's back to WVA and no files--so we'll do the best we can from there.
Flying Saucer Review took a turn for the worse, in my opinion, in 1958. Whereas earlier it was a fairly naively presented forum for all sorts of guesswork about what saucers were and portended, now it was beginning to act like it had the answers. The answers were those that were being given by the contactees like Adamski et al. And massive landings and revelations were just around the corner. This crystallization of foggy vision had to be a direct reflection of the state of mind of editor Brinsley LePoer Trench. Trench must have been that sort of gullible romantic that needed an answer, even if answers were before their time. As stated the other day, some of the most powerful "evidence" cases had recently occurred, and they seemed to feed the fires of those who now "knew" not only that the UFOs were real anomalistic aerial phenomena [a rational deduction] but also that all the contactee claims were true [an irrational one --- contactee claims could conceivably be true (at least here and there) but cases like Levelland or Trindade hardly said a thing about the veracity of Adamski or Howard Menger]. Nevertheless, FSR was acting like great "physical" cases supported "metaphysical" and boldly claimed ideas. "Science" this was not. I haven't read the next year yet, so I don't know whether there was any backlash to this extremism by Trench. Will let you know in time.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first two numbers of FSR in 1958 were pretty "clean". Very little wild unsupported claiming was going on. Only the Reinhold Schmidt hoax, which was reported upon sympathetically, marred a fairly good presentation of UFO facts and ideas. The last two-thirds of the year was a travesty. Averaging over five major articles an issue on contactee and hoax claims, the magazine presented Adamski three times, George Hunt Williamson three times, Howard Menger, Dana Howard, and Wilbert Smith each twice, and thoroughly discredited Brazilian hoaxer, Dino Kraspedon, four times. Pages were awash with wonderful loving messages to Earth from ascended beings on Venus and other planets, complete with prophetic warnings about stopping nuclear war. One can see how such ideas would bubble up in those harried times, and why they would "sell". [I am in favor of interstellar amity and the avoidance of being blown apart as much as anyone, but why so many would put their brains in the rubbish bin to simplistically get behind these charlatans still boggles me a bit]. ------------- these attitudes allowed the magazine to completely buy the photographs of Giampiero Monguzzi [of which the illustrations accompanying this section are two of his seven shots]. Any person familiar with miniature photography would immediately recognize the tell-tale out-of-focus areas closest to the camera, which amateurs [like myself] almost always get when we're trying to photograph a small model from a "fooling" angle to make it appear large. Nevertheless, the FSR screamed: "MONGUZZI TAKES SAUCER PHOTOS OF THE CENTURY". Well, pretty sad. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another thing that they bought without assessment [when US organizations like NICAP and CSI and APRO did not] was the so-called "Straith Letter" wherein it was claimed that the State Department [of the US] had sent Adamski a private letter telling him that they knew that he was on the right track in all he said and encouraged him to keep it up. This letter was a deliberate attempt by Gray Barker and an immature [but State-department-connected {through his father}] young goon named Jimmy Villard. In a bizarre, almost bordering on insane at times, set of letters deposited in the Barker collection at the library archives in Clarksburg, WV, Villard and Barker drool and cackle about how they are doing this great foolery, despite the probably criminal offense of using State Department stationary to do it. Villard, by the way, says that he has many other types of official stationary and will be happy to employ them in a similar way. [obviously none of this latter ever gets to FSR; it was found by myself on an archival trip many years ago]. The bottom line is that the Straith Letter was wholly a hoax, and FSR was happy to buy the whole thing without thought. The second point is that the field had acquired many truth-criminals of varying kinds, and you had to be on guard with crap detectors up and operating at all times. Adamski and Menger, Barker and Villard, have established behaviors that are alive and well today---all over our field. The lesson of our history is to be like CSI or NICAP and not FSR when it comes to such matters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I probably shouldn't waste all our times on the next thing, but it was boosted as a big deal in England at the time, and [somewhat tellingly] has not been discarded by some UFO enthusiasts even today---plus it's an interesting story. So--let's tell a barroom tale. This is the way FSR told it: Three men were out driving near Scarborough in North Yorkshire, when their motor cut out. They saw a glowing object in the sky which seemed to come to Earth a short distance away. One guy went out and located an object at the site, but couldn't carry it [or wouldn't], so he went back to get his buddies. On returning to the place, they passed a man and woman, who did not speak. The object was no longer there when they arrived. Telling their story around, an ad was placed in the paper for a reward for the thing. Someone responded to the ad and a deal was made to pay ten pounds for it. "It" was a disk-like object made largely of copper, 18 inches in diameter and weighing 35 pounds. There were two vent holes scorched about, and a shaft running down the middle. The thing was handed over to a writer named "Avendel"/"Avenel", a pseudonym. Allegedly he knew about UFOs [which was apparently not true]. Some markings were present on the outside, but not decipherable. The thing was nick-named the "Silpho Moor artifact" from the spot of its find. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sometime in here, the thing was pried apart. Within the disk was a "thin copper book", 6"x5", and composed of seventeen thin sheets upon which "glyphs" were written/stamped. This book was given to a local cafe owner to translate. This he did, claiming the message to be a missive from extraterrestrials. The Manchester UFO society agreed with him. "Avendel" said that he thought it was a clever statement by some humans who were using this gimmick to give us needed "philosophy". The Teeside UFO group said that they had the material chemically analyzed and it was normal terrestrial copper which had been sealed together using normal solder. Their conclusion was that it was a slightly elaborate hoax. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I know that you're dying to hear the ET message so here it is: the outside read--"Friends. Message inside to be dealt with by philosophers, not officials. Good wishes, Ulo." hmmmm....philosophers, eh? The inside read [in part--all that FSR reported]: "My name is Ulo, and I write this message to you, my friends on the planet of the sun you call earth. Where I live I will not say. You are a fierce race, and prepare space travel. No one from another planet has ever landed on the earth and your reports to the contrary are faulty....It is impossible to receive radio over far distances owing to natural waves in space, unless key of several frequencies is used, but we can receive single frequencies from near transmitter-recorder in space vehicles". As far as us being nuisances was concerned, we were interfering with their distant-controlled probes: "Our recording vehicles on return are sometimes found to have atoms radiating and we can't touch except by machine". Doubtless many other knowledge gems were omitted by FSR in its coverage. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Other resources added little to this which has been supportive of any reality [other than a hoax] as far as my own reading goes. Lord Dowding, who, despite being a British Air Marshall, doesn't seem to be wired too tight, claimed that he opened the disk and perused the copper book and its translation, and was convinced that it was a true elaborate language. The cafe owner who did the translating said that he could "get into the mind" of the writer and knew that this was a real well-used language. [the language was by the way composed of almost entirely "Ts" and "Vs" stamped at a variety of angles.] Leonard Cramp, who was thought by some people at the time as a person who occasionally made sense, was informed by "Avendel" that the copper book was meant for Cramp [how he "felt" this we don't know] and Cramp believed him. The cafe owner later said that Ulo blew his cover in the text and it was revealed that he was from Mercury. The respectable British UFO group BUFORA said, quite late [2005] that they believed that the persons involved had admitted the hoax. Regardless of all this, the current editor of FSR is said to have re-affirmed his belief in the reality of the ET artifact, even stating that the top of the disk was made of not just copper but copper so advanced that it was transparent. Yikes. The man can't even read the back copies of his own publication. A good story. And good lessons if we're willing to take them. {I hope that it's obvious that the illustrations are FSR's pictures of the device and the stamped markings}.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The last bit is the tale that I [liberally] put in my high-strangeness files, rather than just toss it the rubbish bin, where it, with commentary, probably should go. I'm keeping it out because it has an interesting feature and I think that unlike typical contactees, the woman involved was probably honest. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Cynthia Appleton had just put the babies to bed for an afternoon nap when she got a feeling of a "presence". Looking about, she ultimately noticed the fuzzy outlines of a man standing near her fireplace. He was like an unfocussed television picture which gradually hardened down to crystal clarity. [sounds like the old pre-program commentary from the Outer Limits to me]. His entrance was preceded by a high-pitched whistle. She was scared, but he somehow calmed her. He did not say things aloud, but somehow communicated directly with her mind. He wore a tight-fitting silvery plastic thing with a high Elizabethan collar. He was tall and fair. He claimed to be from another world and that they needed something from the bottom of our seas--apparently Titanium. He said that we were wasting our time with brute force rockets [he didn't state it that way] and spread his hands forming another tv screen in the air. On screen was a large domed disk and ET personnel. He ended up telling her that they live in peace and harmony and that he would return. As he faded out, some newsprint that he had happened to be standing upon was charred.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------About a month and a half later, he came back. Same fuzzy TV screen routine preceded by the whistle. [she had the day before just blacked out and tumbled to a crash off a, gratefully low, piece of furniture]. She was at the same spot when her ET visitor came again. This time he was in a subsidiary capacity to a bigger wheel. As they firmed up they were "solid" and you could not see through them. They were dressed the same with different hairstyles. This time they spoke aloud. [and in a clipped formal english]. They told her that they had to knock her out the previous evening in order to prepare her mind so that they could get through. Her mind was special, and very few people could allow contact. [You will be delighted to know that they were from Ghanas Vahn on Venus--a fact that I know you will apply with discretion]. She should not try to touch them as it could be hazardous to her health. {at this point in the magazine, editor Trench, totally sold on the affair, enthused about the newspapers being charred by radioactivity and gamma rays---which, at charring doses, would have fried her}. They didn't want to appear to too many of us because of panic. They also informed her that Russia was building a death ray which would decompose matter without explosions. {they missed that prophecy rather widely}. They then left, leaving her, as on the previous occasion, with a splitting headache. FSR sold the ranch for this story, but it seems to me to more likely be the product of a sensitive and honest young woman, who had a couple of [hopefully temporary] seizures, with accompanying fantasies. I don't say this lightly. Such micro-seizure dream-like states are in the literature with a lot of stress-induced fantasy imagery. It is at least a serious alternative hypothesis. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Well, I hate to be a skeptical ogre about things, so lets briefly end with a good old Charles Fort-like anomaly. 1886:August 3rd. "Monsieur Poey and Monsieur Touvelet saw numerous objects crossing the face of the Sun. Some of them were round and others were triangular". So, take that, Don Menzel!!
